


Rambling

by plethodon_cinereus



Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Angst, Anorexia, Bad Poetry, Body Dysphoria, Depression, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Eating Disorders, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Poetry, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, vent fic, venting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:06:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 4,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22389901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plethodon_cinereus/pseuds/plethodon_cinereus
Summary: I wrote a set of free verse about my experience with an eating disorder/anorexia. Obvious warning for descriptions of ED behaviors and self harm. I wrote this for venting so it's probably not very relatable.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 11





	1. 6

Six years old and   
just beginning to form memories,   
just beginning to see the world.  
Days filled with beaches and flowers and companionship.  
Thinking you’re smarter than the rest and looking for something new,  
thinking there must be something that makes you unique.  
Now you can begin to hear it, everywhere, from everyone.  
All the adults and so it must be something mature,  
finally something your mind can contemplate.  
Finally something you can be good at.

From the mouths of wine-drunk aunts  
“Oh honey, I remember being young and skinny. Now we’re all fat”  
From the mouths of neighbors,  
“If only I could lose twenty pounds”  
From the mouths of teachers,  
“To be healthy you should run and play outside and avoid sweets”  
From the mouths of the entire world,  
“Childhood obesity is an epidemic. We need to teach our children diet and exercise”

You go to the doctor and he shows you a beautiful thing.  
A chart with sweeping colors that looks like it belongs to a scientist,  
a chart that says you’re good, healthy, skinny, okay.  
Dreams filled with dancers and swirling charts and imagination.


	2. 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional TW for self harm in this chapter

Eight years old and you’re alone,  
torn away from your friends and your safety,  
torn away from the warm sun and long days and rattlesnakes.  
Your new neighbors only speak English and have never made trés leches.  
Now, brothers taunt that you look like a boy in that uniform.   
Now, teachers scold that you haven’t learned your prayers.

The others can tell you’re different  
Always moving, imagining, creating.  
But never communicating, never bringing those creations to light.  
It is louder now, from the lips of the girls and the teachers and your family.  
It is everywhere and it entices you, wrapping its ethereal tendrils around you   
creating faint sparks of safety.

One girl can fit her entire body between the lockers  
You try but prepubescent hipbones strike cold metal hinges  
You try to ignore tender red scratches that form, accidental this time  
and then it wasn’t an accident.

Does fat have feeling?   
Feelings aren’t only just happy and sad and angry and calm.  
Feelings come from nerves under the skin, like the science books say.  
Like a smart child, a good young scientist looking to investigate,  
small hands tear at smooth flesh creating angry redness,   
small nails nearly break the skin and leave swollen lines in their wake.  
As it turns out, fat doesn’t have feeling.


	3. 10

Ten years old and the talents develops,  
Hands calloused from endless days of basketballs and garden insects,  
hands that still can’t hold a pencil properly and are constantly covered in ink,  
have found a new hobby that doesn’t require dexterity.

Proper form goes like this:  
seated on the cold bathroom floor   
with the door securely locked  
to keep out concerned mothers and curious brothers  
a shirt slides up and pants slide down  
but this isn’t what the other kids do alone in the bathroom  
at first the hands are gentle and barely touch  
then fear and guilt take over and turn innocent hands  
into knives that scrape and pierce any inch of flesh  
that can be grasped and pulled

The new hobby has proven that fat doesn’t have feeling but creates a feeling.  
White hot fear blooms and fills the room at the sight of a   
white torso, softly convex in its natural state.  
But as every young scientist knows, nature can be changed by humans

Genes dictate our everyday lives, and fifth graders with straight As  
know a great deal about this and they  
know that their genes carry heart disease and obesity and diabetes.  
But lonely fifth graders with straight As are smart enough to apply what they learn,  
soon every diet commercial, every gym class, every adult’s word,  
soon they take the place of the gospel that was too hard to learn anyways.


	4. 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentions of numbers, bmi, etc.

Eleven years old and alone   
Fainting in church makes unsympathetic teachers and priests certain because  
fainting in church means the devil is here,  
and it’s a good explanation for why that kid always cries in class and still hasn’t learned their prayers

That beautiful chart from so long ago makes a reappearance  
not long after you recover from that concussion.  
Not at the doctor this time but at school,  
which means finally you can show the kids who wrote you off so long ago  
that you really are good at something.

It’s called a BMI chart, of course, everyone knows that.  
Everyone memorized that when they were seven,  
Right?  
No, weirdo,  
Everyone had playdates and watched cartoons and ate ice cream when they were seven.  
You only did that because you had no friends.

A preteen face glows with pride  
When school physicals begin and you do the most sit-ups in the class and  
when the gym teacher announces that your BMI  
is now way below the green line.  
80lbs is nauseating for that tense half-second  
because it’s higher than 70,  
because it’s higher than last time,  
until it’s obvious that the other kids are closer to 90  
And the new number 15 starts its lifelong companionship

The numbers don’t have sharp edges anymore, like they did when childhood hands refused to  
write them in even sizes that fit on the page without shaking and zigzagging.  
Writing down the new numbers brings the opposite feeling of the white guilt  
that has started to rear its face outside the cold scratches in the bathroom.

The new numbers, far from the terror of   
fat, overweight, unhealthy,   
carry the long-awaited   
sensation of relief  
uniqueness  
adequacy  
comfort  
safety  
calm


	5. 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That Gay Shit is here! A much more positive chapter

Twelve years old and years’ worth of arguments  
and tears   
and loneliness and fear  
finally convinces stubborn parents that maybe  
Catholic school isn’t a safe place.

A new place with three times the students  
should have been intimidating but it isn’t because people are friendly like they  
should have been all along and there are choices to  
become immersed with the other outsiders and introverted intelligent loners   
that feel like home.

A beautiful girl with bleach blond hair  
has a voice like a butterfly’s wings and  
has absorbed the dreams from hundreds of fantasy stories.  
Her company feels like love and   
you are filled with yearning to be more than friends.

But everyone sees a girl in your wide gray eyes  
and your curls that appeared last year.  
And a well-meaning mother tell you that  
good Catholic girls don’t want to marry girls and you must be mistaken.  
But the heart is the strongest part of this twelve-year-old body  
that has been through so much  
that has caused pain and this girl  
soothed it all like cool gel  
on a sunburn.


	6. 13

Thirteen years old brings long-awaited horrors  
of training bras and shaved legs.  
Of all the changes none are appreciated except   
those hipbones that slide even further  
to create an empty space between thighs, this new thing  
to focus the endless amounts of restless energy.  
Skinny jeans are more fun when you wear the smallest size.

A new lecture,  
puzzled words from  
a now familiar doctor  
who brings out that lovely  
chart but there are no smiles.  
This time the exhilaration of that  
red sweeping line at the bottom must  
be kept to yourself and new words form  
on your lips to assure the doctor and parents  
that the five pounds lost from a body that should   
be growing  
were  
not   
on  
purpose.

But oh that feeling   
is exhilarating.  
Is a welcome replacement to the prayers  
that never felt true on your lips.  
Floating, the warmth of knowledge  
that this is something yours and yours alone  
that sparks jealously in others because of the   
effortlessness of it all.

Warm relief different from that beautiful girl’s  
warmth that seemed to soothe all  
your broken pieces into art.  
The feeling comforts, focuses, and makes  
the world simple like it should be.

Good and bad,  
black and white.  
Simple rules for a simple world  
spring from the restless mind   
of a now-teenager who cries   
in math class because the work is too easy. 

Good and Bad  
Vegetables and Desserts  
Exercise and Television  
Modesty and Excess  
Restlessness and Relaxation  
do not rest do not stop do not sit down do not enjoy do not be weak do not eat do not be like them  
Books and Computers  
Denial and Comfort  
Dizziness and Sleep  
Hard and Soft  
Penance and Pleasure  
You and Family  
you will not be like them you will not be sick you will be smart you will be pretty you will be unique


	7. 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I deleted most of this chapter because it could be taken the wrong way. If anyone reading this knows me from social media I can send it to you if you really want.

Fourteen years old and the brain has rewired  
into something beautiful and terrifying,  
like a shooting star over a graveyard,  
like a leaf decayed to nothing but veins,  
like a venomous snake asleep in the grass.  
It is so easy to follow the simple rules in black and white 

High schoolers are blunt and shallow  
just like the nails that still drag across  
that detested torso in the routine fashion  
that is less effective now   
because there is almost no flesh to be pulled.


	8. 15

Fifteen years old motivates  
tan legs to run across the grass   
desperate to catch up to friends  
desperate to prove their worth   
as healthy, deserving, useful.

By now you’ve gotten pretty good at this.  
Nine years of dieting will do that to a person.  
Nine years of honing the only thing that you’ve been exceptional at.  
Being skinny is genetic and genes were never in your favor   
but passion and obsession and a strangely rewired brain more than makes up for biology.

It’s a common question,  
that has never had a simple answer  
that would make sense to the rest of the world.  
How are you so skinny?  
I have been my whole life  
Do you eat breakfast?  
Of course  
What do you eat?  
Just small portions, mostly vegetables and fruit, never anything high in fat  
But why? You don’t need to lose weight  
I’m not trying to; this is just what I prefer

Actions are worse than questions  
because they are harder to avoid.  
Because no one would suspect a gentle acquaintance to  
disregard privacy while your back is turned,  
and wrap both hands around a lanky slender thigh  
and shout in triumph that she was right.  
Your legs are smaller than two intruding hands.

The perception of others is intriguing,  
and it is hard to get an accurate view of oneself.   
And flesh that seems excessive and toxic,  
like a rotting wound that needs to be eradicated,  
does not exist on that plane of reality everyone else can see.  
Does this reflect a failing of self or others?  
Who sees the illusion?  
Who is blind?  
You or them?

Days are made of a  
darkness that burns so bright it blinds  
darkness that comes from inside and out.  
Nobody’s fault it is just  
restlessness turned to anxiety and fear  
restlessness whose only outlet must remain hidden  
behind white lies and small meals eaten with friends.

A life filled with fast music with sad lyrics  
and eyes hidden behind layers of blue and gray shimmer  
and fast heartbeats with cold hands.  
Dizzying blackness surrounds the skull, spots close in,  
almost daily now but years of practice makes it easy to stay steady.  
Fainting in public is embarrassing.


	9. 16

Sixteen years old brings friendship  
with a rebellious and energetic person  
with the same problems as you.  
Platonic love is new and meaningful.  
Long runs to nowhere,  
longer runs to hidden places for conversations  
about the damaged parts inside and out that match like golden bracelets.

Comradery forces out the confession,  
the acceptance of the labels to name and define  
the things that have torn you apart.   
Somehow, it’s better because she is there.   
Two broken wholes heal each other because,  
really, two broken halves can’t combine and   
really, both of you are too loud and passionate to be combined.  
It would probably explode like twenty firecrackers hitting a playground slide. 

Long awaited freedom from gym class,  
replaced by a class initially meant to teach health,  
replaced by outdated movies and pictures of gonorrhea.  
The friend you need most sits next to you,  
she makes you laugh at unrealistic scenes that  
she also knows are nothing like the real experience of   
that particular curse shared between two broken wholes.

The real world shatters the lifetime of illusions  
built from a six-year-old’s idea of health twisted and exaggerated,  
built from the burning need to own something and be good at it.  
As if defining the illusion turns it from   
relief  
talent  
comfort  
perfection  
into  
cold  
deadliness  
shame  
stupidity.

Years spent insisting that this label doesn’t apply  
give way to a young scientist with too much time on their hands,  
give up trying to ignore the unignorable words  
anorexia nervosa   
because for God’s sake this is way beyond normal by now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Neither my friend mentioned here or I are pro. I want to make it very clear this wasn't an ana buddy situation, we talked about this kind of stuff to know we weren't alone and helped each other see reality and move towards recovery as we got older.


	10. 17

Seventeen years old is nearly adulthood,  
or at least that’s what everyone says.  
Or more like an illusion of maturity created by standardized tests,   
or driving too fast on lonely empty roads,  
never-ending college applications,  
and looking to the future.

Pride erupts around the country  
as you sit alone and watch the stories  
as tears of joy stream from millions of faces including yours.  
June 2015  
Alone the love surrounds like sun-soaked clouds.  
The safety and elation radiate off those who have  
the freedom to be who they are and love who they love.  
A slap of reality hits when you are no longer alone;  
your family prefers mumbled slurs to pride.

The long-loved team of girls   
running together as the sun comes up,  
running towards a pitch-black lake illuminated by lightning,  
running into each other’s arms at every success or failure,  
can no longer hold you up with their care alone.  
Long spidery legs tumble down hills with arms flying,  
long runs make lungs heave and choke.  
Neglected muscles that never grew when they should have  
do nothing to support injured knees and   
do nothing to keep up with daily abuse.

Running is a chore done only to be accepted in the team.  
Skinny, useless legs striking the pavement cause only  
choking breaths  
burning muscles  
falling behind  
fatigue  
shame  
panic  
panic  
panic  
black flecks coming from every angle engulfing the skull cannot feel blackness surrounds blindness loud ringing and then  
nothing

Four times but you’ve gotten very good at not passing out  
so the grass welcomes buckling knees and a spinning head,  
so at least you don’t get another concussion.  
Making other people worry inflates the shame,  
but years of practice deflects inquiries too close to home.

When well-worn legs reach the end of the finish line  
and admit that they can go no further  
and threaten to snap under pressure  
restlessness returns begging for release and pain,  
the constant assurance that there is talent in these bones.   
The habit had been pushed aside, not eradicated,  
and now it returns in the form of   
a sleek glass scale  
pale skin and paler bones  
half sized meals  
headaches  
light makeup atop tired eyes  
chapped lips  
isolation  
a shivering body returning to the scale upon every moment of privacy naked because shirts weigh too much stomping on the reset button with bruised feet flushing the toilet so no one hears the pounding checking three four five times to make sure and sitting numb on cold dirty tile unable to cry because crying is for people who feel anything other than absolute hatred and familiar rules that turned to burning fear upon seeing that the number is too high.


	11. 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional TW for mentions of self-harm, underage drinking, and a suicide attempt.

Eighteen years old and there are too many ends.  
The end of running because it hurt too much anyways,  
the end of the religious illusions imprinted by guilt and priests worshipping greed.  
The reality of the world chokes and crushes the belief   
that the world tends towards anything beyond entropy. 

The only constants are the familiar sensations  
of wind flowing between shivering thighs,  
of soft fingertips grazing hard ribs separated by millimeters of skin.  
Out of all the bones, hips bring the most comfort.  
Their concave hides behind dark skinny jeans, (the same ones you bought in middle school)  
their twin points threaten to pierce anyone who gets too close.

Well-meaning oblivious adults say it’s that age  
that everyone is depressed, so does   
that mean that it’s normal  
for the girl next to you to cut rows of slim lines down her legs?  
For the boy in math class to pull a trigger against his head and lose his eye but not his life?  
For three girls on the dance team to drink until they can’t feel a thing?  
If that’s the case then it must be normal  
for you to be twenty pounds underweight but still see fat  
and cry at the thought of wearing a size three.

The end of high school does not live up to expectations.  
There was no falling in love  
only strange desire to be with the enchanting girl with scars on her legs and love for the world  
There are no lifelong friendships  
only a hundred loose acquaintances that never think of you again  
There are only cold hands, cynicism,   
and the stubborn ability to be alone and remain hidden.

And then there is that other myth, Freshman fifteen  
whispered by everyone like you   
whispered by every eighteen-year-old going to college.  
Almost a joke about  
weight gain, curvy hips, soft bellies, smooth rolls, thick thighs, tight pants, muffin tops, double chins

But the myth exists for a reason  
and everyone knows that it’s true   
and happens to everyone in some way.  
Before the first college application was submitted   
the terror sunk deep into your core and made its home.  
The fear started as a seed and remained dormant  
like a virus frozen in arctic ice unknown and tiny  
to the rest of the world but   
to the iceberg of a body that holds it  
the tiny seed is larger than life.  
Its roots form the statement as true as your own name  
If that ever happens to me I will kill myself.   
Such an insignificant silly thing  
is blown to catastrophic proportions if it  
is in the mind of an anorexic.   
At first it doesn’t matter and can be ignored.   
Freshman fifteen? Could never happen to me  
And it can be justified  
Really it’s more like five for most people  
Or even played as a desire  
I’d like to not be the size of a thirteen-year-old anyways

For months the frozen seed lays dormant.  
You were supposed to grow years ago so  
you don’t mind buying larger clothes at first.  
Catastrophe is reality and the seed breaks open   
and the roots clench tightly.  
And suddenly this is not a body but a prison  
that crushes from the outside in   
you are trapped.


	12. 19

Nineteen years old drowning in air,  
desperately grasping for reality and coming up short.   
Desperate to lose the prison on your body  
that suffocates with its layer of cushiony flesh

Pale eyes survey a rounded belly in fear.  
Calloused hands scrape plump thighs.  
The button of familiar shorts releases its grip on rotund hips.  
White-hot fear blooms and surrounds in a dense fog.  
Suddenly floating in a terrifying body that has become  
chunky swollen distended soft bulky thick fat chubby bulging flabby pudgy too much too much too much too much 

Tears burn fast and create waves  
to carry a choking smothered body back  
to the ever-familiar sleek pane of glass and metal.   
Once again doors lock and the body is confronted first in the mirror,  
but your eyes have broken again and there is no body only too much.  
But the familiar scale never lies.  
Check three times to be sure.  
Terror knocks you back when the number appears higher than you have ever seen,  
terror is the only thing these eyes can see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter I have written; there are two more planned but I haven't decided what I want to write about for them. If this is getting any views I'll write them sooner.


	13. 19.5

Nineteen and a half while the  
months float and fly on the high  
of numbing the discontent,  
of taking solace in starvation,  
Living in a place you can call your own. 

A friendship ends in hatred and tears.  
With sticky sweet ice cream spilling down the sidewalk,  
with sand scratching exposed bones,  
with yelling and food hidden in a backpack.  
She sits alone in her fear of you,  
and never comes back. 

The addictive rush of deluded happiness,  
from the smallest shorts becoming too big,  
from the number on the scale dropping lower and lower.  
Like heroin the dose must increase.  
The promise of just five pounds does not stick,  
the well-laid plans fade in favor of nothingness.  
Instincts fight against a mind foggy with starvation,  
cocaine’s twisted cousin.

Memory leaves with the pounds on the scale.  
What day is it?  
Numb exhaustion takes its place.  
When was the last full night’s sleep?  
Driving fast and far to release the built-up weight of living.  
Did the exit pass?  
Alone with the melodramatic poets on the radio.  
Is it still a mental breakdown if you can’t feel a goddamned thing?


	14. 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just gonna put a generic warning here for very detailed numbers (weights and calories)   
> Although let's be real if you're reading this you've already ignored like ten such warnings  
> So here it is: Don't use my writing to compare yourself to me or use the numbers to motivate disordered eating because that's not what this is here for. The entire point of me writing this (besides venting) was to tell my story in all the gory detail. It's supposed to be gross because that's how it was. So yeah.
> 
> Tl,dr: TW for numbers, anorexia is bad and pro-anas can gtfo

Twenty years old and you bend until you break.  
You break bent over a toilet seat retching a bottle of vodka while your boyfriend holds your hair.  
You break lying on the floor too exhausted to move a muscle.  
You break in an 8am class taking long sips from an energy drink because you haven’t eaten in twenty hours.  
You break pulling stale cookies out of the trash.  
You break eating curdled ice cream that’s been sitting out for a week and it took you three bites to notice.  
You break shivering under a heated blanket turned up as high as it goes.  
You break swallowing a stack of sleeping pills in the afternoon because 600 calories a day keeps you from feeling.

It is disgusting and raw.   
At first it was okay and nothing hurt too much; but  
at first the air was warm and life had energy.  
Now joints ache and crack and vapor takes the place of brain.

It is a mess quantified by pounds and inches and percentages:   
2 breakups  
$20 for antidepressants  
1 dropped class  
800 calories is normal  
400 is low  
1200 means crying  
95% on the calculus exam  
103lbs  
3.6 GPA  
The exact degree of disaster calculated to the second decimal place

Your body consumes itself from the inside out  
running on fumes  
running from yourself.  
Random flickers of clarity come and go  
and you can see yourself through the veil of reality  
and you understand that you are fading

So you pick yourself up again and again,  
force yourself away from the familiar comfort of self-starvation,  
force yourself out of hatred for what you have become.


	15. 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter! First person POV because I can

Twenty-one years old screaming at the top of my lungs:  
Do you have any idea?  
How long I’ve been trying to save myself?   
How long I’ve been kicking and screaming and picking myself back up off the ground?  
Does it even matter to you?  
That I’ve done this all alone?  
That day in and day out I fight in a million directions to stay alive  
and plaster a smile on my face so you don’t see?

Dragging, always dragging  
Desperate to live  
This is mine and mine alone.   
There never has been a single ounce of pity, of tenderness, of support,  
There never will be.

I’m all I have  
I’m all I have ever had  
I’m all I will ever have  
And that has to be enough because the god you shoved inside of me rotted and faded long before I was born,  
So I will beg and cry and swing my violence until I live.  
The only thing strong enough to destroy me is myself  
and I sure as hell am not going down without a fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recovery isn't cute or poetic, it's kicking yourself in the ass and fixing it. It's the most badass thing you can do and a million times braver than staying trapped in an ED. If my disordered ass who's had anorexia for fifteen years and has zero support from friends and family can do it, then I'm pretty sure anyone can.   
> Yeah, it's not easy and there's back and forth, relapses, and days that are complete shit. But it's better than not trying at all


	16. Moldy Holy Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Suicidal Catholic feels and memories. This is what my brain dumped out tonight.  
> Something slightly to the left of poetry  
> Not exactly part of this series, so I threw it at the end here

The dissonant notes of an organ echo  
youthful voices hoarse and out of tune  
carry on singing

Numb with the cold a small finger  
dips into stale moldy holy water

Wooden kneelers leave bruises  
backs sore from bending

Hold the flame close because  
you are instructed to burn yourself  
not the altar

Weak arms lift a golden cross  
worth more than the sums of your experiences

Hard sharp headbands  
are uniform regulation  
like a crown of thorns

Better to fall on your head  
while standing before the priest  
than faint gently while sitting  
to protect yourself

Ethereal pale limbs  
crooked hyperextended elbows  
peek out underneath  
white robes for the good servants

Tears glisten like stained glass in candlelight

 _In choosing to do wrong_  
_and failing to do good_  
Penance and you deserve punishment  
The sins of omission

A statue deserves  
more respect than  
a twisted dissonant teenager

A dark cathedral  
lit by scattered candles  
A final cry on the knees  
as desperation falls from the eyes

Forgiveness at the last second  
for self induced bones  
living in privilege  
they do not deserve  
Forgiveness at the last second  
for red scratches faded to scars

Begging with face hidden  
cries of resolution  
to the priest behind the wall

Moldy holy water never healed  
Starving never forgave  
Rage turned inward still killed

Skeletal fingers clasping medals of saints  
light hair may catch fire  
while praying to a silent savior  
asking admittance to paradise  
after the 9mm fires  
and a life lived in desperation  
Ends.


End file.
